What is Nova?
PipeOps Nova is the infrastructure control plane that enables you to spin up and manage servers either directly on PipeOps or across your preferred cloud provider, all from a single unified interface. Whether it's AWS, GCP, Azure, or our own high-performance stack, Nova handles the heavy lifting.
With Nova, you provision compute resources in seconds, without getting bogged down in configuration files, SSH keys, or lengthy dashboards. Once deployed, Nova takes over lifecycle management: patching, monitoring, scaling, and hardening are all baked in, so your team can focus on building, not babysitting servers.
Backstory: Why We Built Nova
When we launched PipeOps, server provisioning was limited to major cloud providers. Users could easily create servers in their own AWS or GCP accounts and deploy to them through PipeOps. This was powerful, but we quickly discovered a gap: not everyone had cloud credits, or wanted to manage cloud infrastructure. Some users just needed a reliable server no accounts, no config, no headaches.
Our first attempt to solve this involved reverse-engineering our platform: we spun up a generic shared AWS server behind the scenes and let multiple users deploy to it. While this proved the concept, it came with serious limitations: minimal tenant isolation, limited scalability, and security concerns. So we went back to the drawing board.
Introducing PipeOps-Managed Servers
This led to the creation of PipeOps-managed servers, a clean, production-ready alternative to cloud-provider provisioning. When a user opts to create a server on PipeOps, we create an isolated tenant inside our infrastructure using a multi-tenant Kubernetes architecture inspired by Capsule.
Every PipeOps-managed server becomes its own tenant, with:
- Dedicated namespace-level isolation
- Strict resource quotas and usage limits
- Policy boundaries are enforced at the control plane
- No direct access to our underlying cluster
To enforce security boundaries without exposing our core Kubernetes control plane, we use Capsule Proxy, which enables tenant impersonation. This ensures that each Nova server runs in a secure, isolated environment, without ever sharing access to the core cluster pool itself.
When You Use Your Own Cloud Provider
If you create servers on AWS, GCP, Azure, or other cloud platforms via PipeOps, Nova provisions directly into your cloud provider account. In this case, Nova just simplifies the provisioning and lifecycle management through a consistent UI and API.
The Bottom Line
Nova isn’t just another VM you have to babysit; it’s a fully managed server abstraction that works on your terms. Whether you're provisioning on AWS, GCP, Azure, or using PipeOps-managed infrastructure, Nova gives you full flexibility with zero operational overhead.
With Nova, you get:
- One-click server creation — provision across clouds or on PipeOps in seconds
- No ops overhead — no patching, no updates, no scaling headaches
- Seamless integration with your own cloud accounts, full control, zero lock-in
- Kubernetes-native multi-tenancy when using PipeOps-managed servers, every instance runs in a secure, isolated environment
- Invisible infrastructure — you focus on your product, we handle the grunt work
Nova let's you deploy anywhere and manage nothing.